… these are some of the words you’ll find us using and thinking about, at The Hedge School – which was founded in 2017 by award-winning writer, psychologist and mythologist Dr Sharon Blackie, whose work is focused on the development of the mythic imagination, and on the relevance of our native myths, fairy tales and folk traditions to the challenging times we live in.

The Hedge School was born from a belief that the personal, social and environmental problems we’re facing today have arisen not just as a result of our profound disconnection from the beautiful animate world around us, but a lack of rootedness in our own ancestral traditions. We have no lineage, no sense of continuity; no sense of who we are and why we are here. We don’t feel as if we belong to this crumbling and decadent Western civilisation whose values and have become abhorrent to us – but more often than not, we don’t know what it is that we want to belong to instead.

We have some ideas about that. The Hedge School, then, is about building a new folk culture – but one which is deeply rooted in the native traditions of Ireland and the British Isles. It’s about practical guidance for living well, living authentically, connecting with our places, and finding a deep, embodied sense of belongingness to this beautiful, animate Earth. It’s about reclaiming ancient wisdom – not to hark back to or try to recreate the past, but to use that wisdom to help us build authentic traditions for today. We aim to offer sound, inspiring resources which are free to all, as well as paid-for courses in the native culture, folklore and traditions of the Celtic lands.

The term ‘hedge school’ has its roots in Ireland; it dates back to the seventeenth century and attempts to force Irish children to attend schools designed to train them in English language and customs, and the ‘true religion’. Rather than submit to such indoctrination, the Irish went back to the hedge, and created their own schools. No institutions, just a healthy respect for the old ways. In 1655 Oliver Cromwell called them trainings in ‘superstition, idolatory and the evill customs of this Nacion.’ We’ll go for that.

Our Hedge School — a physical location as well as a virtual space — has a similarly subversive intent. No institutions, no dogma, no prophets or preachers: just the wisdom of the hedge, and of the land. The wisdom which the wind blows down from the jagged peaks of the Connemara mountains, which the sea salts away in the vast network of rocky tidal inlets which characterise our coastline. The wisdom of the old stories, of the old ways.

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